Disclaimer: Still not mine.
Authoress Note: I'm sorry some (CoughmostCough) chapters are so short, I just go with what I feel are the natural break points in my story. But the chapters will be coming faster now, my computer is fixed. Also, here's where a little creative license comes in. If you don't see it, I'll tell you at the end of the chapter.
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Nearly an hour later I found myself sitting with my back flush against the ornate Quoxwood headboard of Fiyero's bed, his nearly still form lain across my lap. I just stroked his dark hair and pressed a small towel drenched in cool water to his fevering brow. He was unconscious now, and Elphaba hadn't come yet. I'd done all I could for Fiyero, she had to do the rest, work her spellificying.
When I'd first felt his fever coming on, I'd left his side for just a few minutes. I'd ventured around Kiam Ko, and found some small towels, and a few rolls of gauzified bandages. I collected a bowl of chilled water and set to making Fiyero as comfortable as possible. My hands shook, tears lined my eyelashes, and I bit my lower lip as I attempted to stop the flow of blood drenching the once pristine white sheets, trying to remember some of the emergency assistance classes I'd had to take at Shiz. I'd hardly ever paid attention, and for the first time I was regretting it.
I truly realized the extent of Fiyero's injuries for the first time. I'd known it was bad, but…Sweet Oz. How had he even survived that long? And he was still hanging on.
The blue diamond tattoos on his back and upper arms were camouflaged amongst bruises and fresh, raw gashes that looked as if they were from a…whip? The diamonds on his chest were almost unidentifiable. There was the deep wound on his side, one on his lower stomach, running from hipbone to hipbone, and most viciously, most savagely of all, one running from the top of his chest to the gash on his stomach. How could our fellow Ozians be so cruel? Surprisingly, only one small cut dare crease his forehead. But, hideous purple bruises lined his rib cage, they were the deepest color under the bottom rib on his right side. Every rib was broken, I felt that as I gently ran a cool cloth down his side, attempting to wipe away some of the blood. He cried out in pain and it echoed through the empty halls of the castle. I swallowed back a growing lump in my throat.
I bandaged him up as best I could, changed the sheets, and now sat on the bed, Fiyero's head on my lap, his eyes closed, his breathing shallow. I stroked his hair, willing him to keep hanging on until Elphaba showed up and could work her magic to save him. His face had paled even further, his eyebrows and eyelashes the major source of color.
Another good fifteen minutes must have passed in silence, and I just watched the shaky rise and fall of Fiyero's chest with each new breath. Then, in the darkness outside the nearby picture window, I heard a shriek, and then a series of cackles.
Elphaba! Maybe she wouldn't be too late to save Fiyero!
I heard her footfalls in her heavy, totally unattractive, black combat boots up the hall, and then I heard yelling, from two voices, the scraping of metal on the ground? And the voices, one was Elphaba, that's for certain, but the other one? No, no, it couldn't be…Bick? My ears perked up, I looked around, and suddenly Elphaba was in the doorway, dragging a Tin Man behind her, and he was putting up quite a fight.
The noise made Fiyero come to just a bit, his dark eyes opening, their normal clarity gone, they were clouded with pain.
"Elphie, who is that?" I shrieked.
"Miss Glinda, don't you recognize me?"
"Bick?" Oh my Oz, I was right.
"Boq." He answered dryly. Then, he gasped. "Fiyero?"
Elphaba nearly knocked Bick out of the way, rushing to Fiyero's bedside. When I spoke, I was surprised at the calmness of my voice. "His fever is really high Elphie, we have to do something soon, like, now."
Bick was soon next to Elphaba, his shiny, metal appearance still a little to take in. And then it hit me why he was here. He had been studying medicine at Shiz; he was going to become a surgeon. But, did his presence mean that Elphaba couldn't find a spell to save Fiyero, that his survival would depend on conventified medicine? And how did Bick become made of Tin? What had taken Elphaba so long to get to the castle? And most importantly, could either of them, or even maybe all three of us, save Fiyero?
What if we couldn't? I stepped down off the bed, and began sobbing hysterically.
"Get her out of here!" Bick cried as he began examining Fiyero's injuries. The next thing I know, Elphaba is all but dragging me out of Fiyero's bedroom into the candle lit hallway, and the only thing I had the common sense to do was grab my wand from it's leaning place against a wall very near to the doorframe.
"Glinda! Glinda! Stop! Just Stop! SHUT UP!"
I slapped her. I don't know why, I just did. And it felt good.
She just stared at me for a few moments, and then: "Do you feel better?"
I wiped my eyes. "Yes, I do."
"Good." She slapped me back.
I grabbed my wand, and spun it expertly, ready for a fight. She brandished her broomstick, which only seconds before lay dropped in a flurry on the cold stone floor. The suddenly, we tossed our 'weapons' aside, and began girl fighting. I whipped her black pointed hat off her head and began smacking her upside her green head with it.
This went on for a fair few minutes, until we both couldn't remember how we began fighting in the first place. Anyway, we weren't so much as fighting as slapping at the air around each other's hair. As I sat up, catching my breath, I had a few questions.
"Elphie, what happened to Bick?"
"I don't want to talk about it. And it's Boq."
"Who's Boq?" I asked, thoroughly confused.
"Never mind."
"Elphie?"
"Yes?"
"Why is Bick made of Tin?" I know I'd asked her that already, just…not in so many words.
"I went to see Nessa. She's Eminent Thropp, Governess of Munchkinland now."
I gasped. The only way that could have happened…"Elphie, I'm so sorry."
"She said our father died of embarrassment because of me. Because I'm so wicked."
"But Elphie, you're not wicked! You're just misunderstood!" I cried.
"I hope so Glinda, I hope so." She took a deep breath, and continued. "I'm surprised we hadn't heard. Frex," Elphaba always called her father by his given name. I call my dad Popsicle. She calls hers Frex. Whatever. "Frex died early this morning."
"Oh, Elphie, I'm so sorry."
She went on. "I get there, Nessa's in charge, and she sends me on this guilt trip about her being an un-elected official, and she said that she couldn't be harboring a fugitive, like me."
How could Nessa say something so hurtful to her sister who had spent almost her whole life taking care of her? How ungrateful.
"So, I found a spell that gave her the ability to walk." I gasped again. How wonderful! Nessa, who had been wheelchair ridden her entire life, walking! "And she called in her manservant."
"Bick?"
"Yes Glinda, Boq."
"Who's Boq?"
"Bick."
"Ohh."
"You see, Nessa loves Boq, err, Bick, but he loves you Glinda."
After the evening I'd had, I didn't even acknowledge her revelation with anymore of a response than a sigh. Sorry Bick, I love Fiyero. But, who knows, he might not even be alive to love me back very soon.
"So, to keep Boq-"
"Bick?"
"Yes, Bick. To keep him from leaving her and coming after you, Nessa put a ban on all travel from Munchkinland. No one could leave. And she impressed him into service to her."
"Well, did she dress nicely?"
"What?"
"You said that she impressed him. So she must have been dressed well." What can I say? It had been a long day. The man I love was dying. I just wasn't thinking.
"But, since Nessa could walk, she didn't need him anymore, and he was going to try to leave, to come after you. But she got angry, and she yanked the Grimmerie out of my hands, and began casting a spell to make him lose his heart to her, only she pronounced it all wrong, and the spell she ended up casting just made Boq, I mean Bick lose his heart period, it was literally shrinking inside his chest. So I turned him into someone, something that didn't need a heart, a Tin Man."
I was crying again. For Fiyero. For Bick. For Boq, whoever he was. For Nessa. For Frex. For Elphie. For Me. How had things gotten so bad so fast? I wanted to scream, I wanted to shout. I wanted to pound my fists on the floor, and just make it all better somehow.
But how?
We sat in silence for a moment, the only sound that could be heard being the occasional sniffling back of tears. I wiped my eyes and noticed a small black bag just outside the now closed door to Fiyero's bedroom. Then, the creaking of metal.
The door flung open, and Bick stuck his head out. "Someone hand me my surgical kit, quick!"
I sat for a split second Elphie and I just stared at him in horror. Then, without even thinking, I jumped for the black bag outside the door. I all but threw it at Bick, who snatched it out of the air.
"What's happening?" Elphaba called, all of her wits all but gone.
"What's wrong?" I chimed in.
"Well, let me see," Bick continued as we followed him back into Fiyero's bedroom, "Part of this rib, right here," he gestured to what I guessed was a bottom rib on Fiyero's right side, behind the worst part of the bruising, "It's broken, like the rest of them, but this particular one, part of it broke into his lung."
I gasped, feeling faint. I wasn't absolutely sure what that meant, but it sounded horrendous.
"What exactly does that mean?" Elphaba asked.
"It means that part of the bone has stabbed right through his lung, and he's quite literally drowning in his own blood."
I'm still not quite sure wither it was me screaming, or Elphaba.
Bick never stopped working. He opened his case, and began unloading terrifying looking tools and wiping them down with a black cloth. "Do either of you know where the liquor pantry or the wine cellar is here?"
"Yes." The two of us answered simultaneously. I knew where the wine cellar was, I'd been in Kiam Ko's sister castle, the one that Fiyero's family actually used. He and I went there during our first year at Shiz, for spring break. He took me home to meet his parents. They were very regal, elegant, but still approachable people who'd all but welcomed me as their daughter in law the second they met me. And the funny part about that was that Fiyero and I weren't even engaged yet. I vaguely remembered him telling me that that castle and Kiam Ko had identical floor plans. How Elphaba knew any of this…I didn't want to think about it.
"Good, get me a bottle of red wine."
"For what?" I all but shrieked. He was giving medical care to the most important person in my life, the man I love. And he was thinking about a drink? And beside the point, wouldn't he rust now that he's metallic?
"To sterilize these." He answered calmly, holding up a particularly scary-looking, very sharp, surgical implement.
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Authoress Note par deux: Okie Dokie, my creative license was Bick's area of study. In the novel, I know he becomes a farmer, but in the musical we never know what he became (other than the Tin Man) or what he was studying at Shiz.